Month: June 2015

Most Christians look at Jesus as the perfect human — perfect God and perfect man. Everything he did while he was on earth was good and right and true. Jesus is regarded as a maverick, championing human rights, women’s rights, and racial equality way ahead of his time.

I was reading a “random lunchtime reflection” of my Christian friend, Nate, who was musing on the persecution and discrimination of minorities. He recalled the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4) who initially refused to give him a drink on the basis of their racial enmity. But, Nate concludes, “Jesus offers her not only salvation but interestingly, also equality and freedom…”

I used to think like this as well. Jesus was my ultimate hero, my idol, and there was nothing he did that could possibly be wrong because he was, well, God in the flesh. When I began stripping away my beliefs, Jesus was one of the last to go, because he was the one that I had a supposed relationship with. But as I distanced myself, I began to read many of the stories more critically than I did before.

(Disclaimer: I will be discussing the stories about Jesus AS IF they actually happened. I have reasons to think they might not have happened the way they were narrated, if they happened at all, but that is another story.)

The anecdote about Jesus and the Samaritan woman does seem to imply that Jesus wasn’t a racist. However, there is this other story in Matthew 15:21-28 where a Caananite woman came to Jesus and asked him to heal her daughter from demon possession. Jesus initially doesn’t mind her, but she was persistent. His disciples finally asked him to send her away.

Then Jesus told the woman,“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

Still the woman persisted, so he said, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

To which the woman replied, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Jesus was then amazed at the woman’s faith and proclaimed her daughter as healed.

I used this story to mess around with Nate’s head a bit, to present another story showing Jesus was not as racially unprejudiced as he thought. The story shows snobbish, supremacist Jesus who wouldn’t give the time of day to this woman he equates to a dog. It is probably only the woman’s witty reply that saves her and makes him change his mind. But what if she had just scurried away at his stinging remark? Would her daughter still be healed?

The usual apologist explanation to this story would be something along the lines of Jesus making that remark on purpose in order to draw out the woman’s faith. Now, if you are a Christian, you would, of course, be inclined to accept this and be thankful even that such a wonderful explanation existed. It just doesn’t make sense for me though. Besides, this is not the only passage that shows Jesus favoring the Jews.

Another passage I find really uncharacteristic of a sane person can be found in Mark 11:12-14:

“The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard him say it.”

The story goes on to say that when they passed the tree again the next day, it had withered and the disciples were amazed.

So let’s get this straight. The perfect God-man sees a fig tree that didn’t have figs (because it wasn’t the season for them) and goes into a little tantrum because he was hungry and curses the tree to die.

Sounds legit.

(Yes, I’ve read the various apologist commentaries on this passage. No, they are not really that satisfying, unless you are already predisposed to believing them anyway, because the alternative is simply unthinkable for you at this moment in time.)

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Send me your thoughts at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

People who know me well know that I am a Duterte fan. My Facebook wall is testament to that as one can see many pro-Duterte articles and memes I have posted. While we can argue black and blue about the morality of his methods, the brutal frankness and vulgarity of his statements, or the future impact of his brand of leadership, the one thing we cannot argue with is results. It is because of him that Davao is what it is today.

(By the way, to those who read my column two weeks ago entitled “Would Duterte Make A Great President?” I would like to clarify that the only paragraph I wrote there was the first one. The rest of the piece was written by Mr. Abella, whom I mentioned there. I hope this puts a stop to people who keep asking me if I was really kidnapped, or if I was really a pastor in 1996, or if I am still a pastor now. Please read carefully next time.)

However, there was a statement he made in an interview with Jessica Soho of GMA that bothers me. At the conclusion of the interview, Soho asks, “May kinatatakutan ho ba kayo, Mayor?” (Is there anything you are afraid of, Mayor?)

Duterte replies, ”Nanay ko pati tatay ko, at ang Diyos. I am afraid of karma. Takot ako sa tao na hindi naniniwala ng Diyos, hindi naniniwala ng karma because that guy will do what he wants to do in his life.” (My mother, my father, and God. I am afraid of karma. I am afraid of people who don’t believe in God, who don’t believe in karma because that guy will do what he wants to do in his life.)

That is a statement I totally disagree with.

People who want to do what they want in life, who have headstrong personalities, will do it regardless of their belief or non-belief in God. They will simply find a way to justify what they are doing (if it is wrong). In 2013, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons released some information regarding the religious affiliations of the inmates and it shows that atheists make up only 0.07% of the prison population who were willing to divulge their religious affiliation. Christians (Catholic and Protestant) accounted for 53%, Muslims around 5% and smaller percentages spread out among other minor religions. We don’t have such statistics for the Philippines but I don’t see how the result will be much different given that a vast majority of our population are predisposed to believing in some sort of god.

One may even argue that belief in a merciful God may pave the way for desperate people to commit crimes. “Surely God will understand and forgive. He knows that I have to do this to survive or to help my child, or some other family member.” The hope in an afterlife may give a person the idea that there is still a chance to do better next time.

In fact, look at all the people we have in government who are involved in one shady deal or another. Chances are, you will also see them professing their faith, praying, and supporting their church. An atheist friend of mine, who happens to be a harsh critic of Digong’s “kill them all” methods remarked, “Isn’t it ironic that he says those who do not believe in God will do what they want to do? Yet, isn’t he doing what he wants to do by killing the criminals without due process?”

You have to admit that he has a point.

Let me share why an atheist might not necessarily be a person who will go around raping, pillaging, murdering and drinking babies’ blood. This is a stereotype I hope to shatter in this deeply religious country of ours.

A person who holds no belief in gods or an afterlife believes that this life is the only one there is. There is no reset button, no replay option. Once the game is over, it’s over. Therefore, this life is precious. It is not something to be taken lightly. This person has more motivation to live a good life instead of being reckless because there is no second chance and no redemption.

Penn Jillette, a prominent atheist and stage magician, once said, “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.”

The mayor should be more afraid of are those who believe that God is on their side. Look at the suicide bombers, fanatics and martyrs. Almost all of them hold deep religious beliefs. They think they are obeying their God’s commands. They are willing to die because they believe they will be rewarded in the next life. These are actually the kind of people who will do whatever they want as long as they can justify it in the name of their god.

As for atheists/agnostics? You need not be afraid of us. All we do is write articles like this, or rant or debate on Facebook. We will not strap bombs on our body and threaten to destroy all your churches. We have no ideologies to die for and everything to live for. We live only once (and we believe that literally), so we have every reason to make sure that we live good, happy lives.

Let me end with a verse from Robert G. Ingersoll, also known as The Great Agnostic:

“Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to help make others so.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Send me your thoughts at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

I received a lot of feedback on my previous article, “Is EmGoldex a Scam?” both in the comments section, as well as via email. Of particular interest to me were the staunch defenders who proclaimed that my logic “sucks” and that I didn’t do the proper research, and they proceeded to explain how I wrongly described this or that specific detail in their payout scheme.

Truth to tell, I expected this because as I have already mentioned, I have seen this happen over and over again in the past. It’s like knowing the secret to a magic trick. Once you’ve seen it, then you know how it’s done and even if the magician does variations to the trick, you can still probably figure out how it’s done, because you know the basic principle.

In other words, I don’t need to fully understand the marketing plan of EmGoldex or whatever other company out there. All I need to know is the gist of it, as well as some knowledge of its products, and it’s easy to tell if it’s a scam or not. Perhaps it’s my critics who should recheck their logic and do their proper research on pyramid schemes. I was, after all, a teacher of algebra, geometry, physics and computer programming. So I have every reason to be very confident with the soundness of my logic.

The bottom line is this: How is the company earning money?

If it earns money mainly via recruitment, then it is a pyramid scheme BY DEFINITION. It may even be registered with SEC (it’s not that hard to register a corporation and make it sound legal at first). Many past scams were registered with SEC so that’s not really a guarantee — although a company that isn’t registered ought to make you really doubtful.

It also doesn’t matter whether this celebrity or that politician endorsed it. Come on, these people are human too and they can make mistakes, or they can be scammers as well. What? You don’t believe that politicians or celebrities can be scammers? Then you might be interested in buying a 2.5 billion peso parking building in Makati that I happen to be selling.

So what if it’s a pyramid scheme? If people know what they’re getting into and are willing to take the risk, why shouldn’t they be free to do so?

Well, the problem is that sponsors or uplines are RARELY transparent about the risk. They will always focus on the upside and downplay the downside. They will show you how easy it is to double, triple, quadruple or quintuple your money. And all you have to do is to “invite two, only two.” They don’t tell you that majority of those who invested have not yet earned anything. In fact, they spend a lot of time trying to convince you that the company is legitimate, and that it is not a scam, and so on and so forth.

But as I have shown in the last article, for every person who exits, there are 14 other people who are waiting — in other words, they haven’t earned anything yet. What they don’t know is that the money they invested was used to pay out the exiting person and the rest goes to the pocket of the owners.

Ah, but they will say that it doesn’t really go into their pockets because they have to pay out the next exiting person. True, but remember that the next person can’t exit unless there are new people coming in (or old people who “reinvested”) so there’s always fresh cash coming in and only a fraction of that is used to pay out the exiting person.

Now, experienced schemers will rarely admit that they make money from recruitment (because they know that they will be trapped by the definition of a pyramid scheme). Therefore, they will try to persuade you that they are really in the business of buying and selling gold, and that is how the company makes money.

Again, that is patently false and is relatively easy to demonstrate. The historical price per gram of gold can be found in the goldpriceoz.com website, which uses the London gold fixing price as its reference. If we look at a 6-month window on the price of gold (from Dec 2014 to June 2015), we can see that the highest point is at $41.66. and the lowest point at $36.88. That means even if I bought at the lowest point and sold at the highest point, I would have earned $4.78 which is roughly 13% return on my original investment.

Let’s look at a one year window (from June 2014 to June 2015). The highest point is at $43.09. and the lowest point at $36.72. Following the previous analogy, I would have earned $6.37 or 17% return on my original investment.

(Note that in both these scenarios, I am presenting the BEST CASE — buying at lowest and selling at highest — but we know this RARELY happens in reality. In fact, if you had bought gold in June 2014 at around 40.50 and held on to it, your portfolio would have a  NEGATIVE net value today because gold in June 2015 is only 37.80.)

But going back to the analogy, we have seen that in even the best case for one year, we only got a 17% return by buying and selling gold. In contrast, EmGoldex promises to turn your PHP35,000 into PHP180,000. That’s a whopping 514% return on investment. So tell me, how did they earn that much money in such a short time? By buying and selling gold? But we have already shown that’s not possible.

Therefore, they earn from recruitment, and therefore, it’s a pyramid scheme.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Send me your thoughts at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

For the people who misread last week’s article, please note that I am not and have never been a pastor, nor have I been kidnapped. Please read the first paragraph of that article again and you will know who the author of that piece really is. All I wrote was the first paragraph.